Acoustics Part 3

More today, about acoustics. Absolutely everything in the design and construction of a room, or concert hall, contributes to its acoustics… from the shape and size of the room, to the building and finishing materials, to the seating configuration and height of the stage, to the seemingly minor decorative details.

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A Minute with Miles is a production of South Carolina Public Radio.

For that reason, it’s often impossible to say precisely why the acoustics are better in one room, than in another. Some things are predictable: stone tends to reflect sound, and wood tends to vibrate with sound. But a curved stone wall reflects sound differently from a straight one, and wood vibrates differently depending on what it’s attached to, how it’s attached, and how far it is from the source of the sound. It’s the total package that counts, the often mysterious and unpredictable sum of interactions of all the possible factors. But we’ll continue with acoustics tomorrow…

I’m Miles Hoffman, and this has been A Minute with Miles – a production of South Carolina Public Radio, made possible by the J.M. Smith Corporation.

Related Content

Acoustics is the science of sound. More specifically, it’s the branch of physics that deals with sound waves and their properties—how sound waves are generated, how they behave in various circumstances, how they interact.

We’re talking about acoustics this week. Acoustics is the science of sound, but the word has another meaning, as well. When we ask about the acoustics of a concert hall, or of any room, we’re asking about qualities, about how things sound in that room.

When discussing acoustics it’s important to remember that there’s no absolute standard, and that different kinds of music may be better served by different acoustics. A piece for solo cello, for example, might sound wonderful in the richly reverberant acoustics of a cathedral, while a string quartet or piano in the same space would sound like mush.